CREAK descriptor evaluation for visual odometry

Abstract

Each year, latest state of the art technologies and algorithms arise that claim and prove to-shine their predecessors. One such algorithm is the Colour-based Retina Key-point (CREAK) descriptor, which is based on the FAST Retina Key-point (FREAK) descriptor with the included functionality of considering colour information in its Key-point description. This paper explores the implementation of CREAK in a “real-time” visual odometry application by means of a comparative study of the more well-known FREAK algorithm. Although FREAK achieved more accurate odometry when key-points were abundant, this proved to be too computationally expensive. CREAK on the other hand outperformed FREAK when key-points are scarce due to its lack of false-positive matches.